all_inclusive | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Saturday night had been the one night of the week that everyone in the mansion had taken off from training, some (Raven) because they insisted on a few hours dedicated to nothing but enjoying themselves, others (Charles) because with no one else around, there was nothing else to do but relax.

He wasn't surprised to find that most of the hotel's residents shared Raven's view of how a weekend ought to be spent. There was rarely one that passed without some sort of party cropping up in the Smoking Room, people crowding the billiards tables or setting up a film in the basement movie theater. It was nearly impossible to leave his room on a Saturday night without walking through a poker game or Mario Kart tournament.

Things on the Proserpina had been different. There, Erik had never lacked for solitude— a virtue of the enormous space they'd occupied, no doubt— and he couldn't decide whether he liked this better or not.

Tonight he'd found himself restless, spurred to wander by some impulse he had no interest in analyzing. He was in a rare mood, to be actively seeking company, but he'd spent too much time alone these past few weeks, and he was tired of it. There was music coming from the Smoking Room, but he headed instead for the library, where he could hear the sounds of laughter and people talking over one another.

The scene that greeted Erik there made his eyebrows shoot up, a dry little laugh surprised out of his throat. On the floor was a white square of plastic, blanket-sized, covered in rows of colored dots. Several people were contorted on top of it— and truthfully he couldn't be certain how many people there were, their bodies were so tangled together.

Everyone still seemed to be clothed, he noted in relief, otherwise this might have been incredibly awkward.

"Right foot, red!" someone called, and the confusing tangle of limbs shifted in tandem as everyone struggled to do as they were told.

Leaning against the doorjamb, he crossed his arms over his chest, smirking. "So this is what people do for fun around here?" he asked of no one in particular.

That, of course, was when someone laughed, someone else's foot slipped, and the whole mess of bodies came crashing to the ground. Erik's grin widened; he looked smugger than ever, but simply shrugged and said, "Oops."

[Twister was invented in 1966, so Erik's never seen it before! Be part of the unfortunate people trying to play, or join him in enjoying a little schadenfreude.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Simmons had heard the cacophony and in her brain-fried stupor of having been doing research for nearly twelve hours straight, had gravitated towards it. It had seemed like a rather good time and so, she'd nearly walked into some poor man's back in her attempts to get closer to it. It was only when she stopped two inches from said (lovely) back that she realised perhaps she needed more rest.

That, or her reading glasses. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I heard noise and..." Her words are muffled, but she steps back, offering a bright smile. "No harm done? Accidents all avoided and no need to file any complaints, yes?"

Wonderful. It's Hank McCoy in a woman's body. Erik raised an eyebrow dryly in her direction, trusting his lack of giving a damn to communicate itself without words.

She flushed and looked at her shoes, mumbling something he didn't catch, and a sudden stab of guilt (he'd come looking for company, after all) made him offer a slight little smile and say, "You're in luck; I hate paperwork. Also, if there's a complaints bureau in this place, they're doing a good job hiding it."

"I think maybe they'd probably want to hide it, given the terrible nature of complaints," she jokes, stepping back and trying not to be too obvious about the onceover she's giving him. His physique reminds her of Ward and she wonders if maybe he doesn't do something in a similar line of work. "Were you invited to the party?" she asks, gesturing inside the room.

Erik snorted. "Not at all. But it didn't take much to crash it." Literally or figuratively.

"I was... bored. And unaware that a gymnastics team would be performing in the library." Someone was straightening out the plastic sheet again, and a different group of people were moving to stand by it, all looking at a young man who held a spinner board on his lap. It was clearly a game of some kind, whose purpose seemed to be to force its players into ridiculously compromising positions. "People volunteer to do this without being coerced?" he asked, arching an eyebrow in the girl's direction.

Jemma peers past his shoulder and that's when she sees what they're actually doing. "Oh! That's Twister," she says, pointing with a bright smile on her face. "I remember we set that up once at the Academy and saw whose centre of balance was strongest. It's not me," she's quick to assure, given that she had been out of the game fairly early. "I'm not exactly as flexible as some of the field agents."

Academy— agents— now he knew who she really reminded him of; a younger and less buttoned-up MacTaggert. He'd have to try not to hold that against her.

"You're CIA, then?" he asked, his expression coolly disinterested as he gave her a once-over in exchange for the one she'd given him. "Or is it FBI?"

Edited 2014-04-18 18:28 (UTC)

She gives a deep laugh at that, amused that he could think of her as some sort of actual agent. True, she's called Agent, but it's really only an honorific given the fact that she's only a scientist and not really an agent. "Neither," she replies. "I'm a part of an organization called S.H.I.E.L.D., but I'm in Sci-Ops," she says. "I'm a biochemist."

Of all the answers he'd imagined, that was the one he hadn't expected, and he felt a stab of annoyance that it hadn't even occurred to him. His mouth compressed into a thin line, and he said tightly, "I'm familiar with S.H.I.E.L.D." According to Carter, they had a dossier on him a few inches thick. Probably well above this girl's pay grade to have seen, but maybe not.

"I knew one of your agents; she'd been sent to the same place I was, before I came here. Agent Carter— otherwise known as Agent Thirteen?"

She shakes her head, not having really met anyone named Agent Thirteen. "I'm not really in the field much. I mean, even before I took my assignment, I was more of a labrat," she confesses. "I'm a biochemist, I focus on the items that come in and try and take care of our team medically when the need arises," she explains. "My name is Jemma Simmons."

Since a comment about hating laboratories would probably be considered a rude reply, Erik martialed his courtesy and said instead, "Erik Lehnsherr." It was a risk, but she didn't show any signs of recognizing his name— probably for the best. In his experience, nothing soured a conversation faster than finding out someone had already heard of you as a mass-murdering terrorist.

"Does your team need medical assistance often?" Carter had certainly never shown much regard for her personal well-being; he wondered if that was a prerequisite for joining up.

"No, not entirely," Simmons admits, breezing past the name without a hint of recognition. "It's been the usual. Physicals," she says, trying to keep her voice steady because she can't talk about reviving Skye from the dead because that's classified and no matter how much she wants to talk about that, it's off-limits. "Sometimes, there's some bruising and mild abrasions to deal with."

And occasionally, Chitauri viruses that force her to jump out of planes. So, there is that. Her smile is weaker now, not entirely confident. "I'm more a biochemist than a doctor anyhow."

Elsa, meanwhile, finds the whole spectacle to be terrifying. She pauses in the middle of an evening stroll to look in and bites down on her lip, hugging arms around herself. If she were to play that game and slip up...

It doesn't bear thinking about and nervously, she takes a few steps back.

"I don't think I would do well in that game."

"I don't think anyone does well unless they're willing to let themselves be made an utter fool of," replied Erik dryly.

He glanced at the girl, who was watching the group of laughing people reset the game with a sort of wistful anxiety, her gloved hands folded in front of her. She looked to be the same age as most of those on the floor; was she just shy, then , or avoiding them for a reason?

Now I know I'm being bored to death, he thought with a mental roll of his eyes, if I've begun speculating about the lives of teenagers.

Yet the girl lingered, and Erik finally broke the silence. "It's a bit warm for gloves, don't you think?"

Edited 2014-04-18 18:00 (UTC)

"I have a hard time getting warm," Elsa replies, her voice soft. She crosses her arms, trying to shield herself from his gaze. His scrutiny turns the air cold around her, a few spare flakes appearing from the sky.

It was either magic or a mutant ability— they'd met a boy outside San Antonio who could alter the temperature of things just by touching them, perhaps this was something similar?— but either way, it caught Erik's attention more than anything else she could have said or done.

"That's understandable," he said, tracing the path of one of the falling snowflakes with his eyes. "So you can— what, make it snow? Or is it more than that?" He didn't sound skeptical, only curious, and he lifted a hand to catch another flake on his palm, his mouth curving in the closest thing to a real smile he'd shown anyone in days.

Elsa looks at him, her face troubled and her eyes wide with uncertainty. She never knows how people will react to the extent of her power and she can't handle someone else's fear, not again.

"I don't know if I should show you...It's...It's a lot."

Erik had always kept a handful of change in his pocket— once, to keep Shaw's Reichsmark company; and after, to have something to test his powers while they'd been so reduced on the station. He'd kept up the habit— it staved off boredom, if nothing else— and he drew out the coins now, unfolding his hand and letting them orbit each other in a slow dance a few inches above his palm.

"I know a little something about power," he said quietly, meeting her eyes with a steady gaze. "You don't have anything to fear from showing me."

Elsa stares, her eyes following the coins' path. In her time here, she has encountered others with gifts, but none like this man's. In ways they're similar to hers but, she thinks, with a different element.

"How are you doing that?"

Erik did smile then, the expression oddly gentle on his sharp features. "It's my power," he said with a little shrug. "I was born with it, though it didn't manifest until I was a teenager. In my world there are a lot of us— mutants is the word we use." He hadn't known it until he met Charles and Raven, but they'd all adopted it over those months spent at the mansion. Now it was as much a part of him as the power it described.

The girl still looked unconvinced. "You don't have to show me if you don't want to," said Erik. God, but she reminded him of Raven. "But you don't have to hide what you can do— at least, not around me."

"I just don't want to hurt anyone." She's already hurt the person she loves most in the world. Twice. Elsa already knows what her powers can do if left unchecked and she can't. Won't let it happen again.

Andras loved the library. He enjoyed reading and was able to enjoy it even more in this elegant, impressive room, where books surrounded the central reading area, stacked on shelves in endless rows reaching up to the ceiling.

The smell of old books and dust only added to the joy of reading, as did the beautifully carved mahogany book cases, the large and slightly musty tapestries on the walls, and the wonderful baroque ceiling painting.

He found the door blocked by a man leaning casually against the door frame and looked over his shoulder to find the library hijacked by people playing Twister.

He sighed. "Some people, apparently, yes," he said, clearly not agreeing with their idea of 'fun'.

The Germanic accent was pleasantly familiar, and Erik turned to meet the man's dry disappointment with a little smirk of commiseration.

"I must be getting old," he said. "That, or I really have got as little of a sense of humor as I've always been accused of having." He didn't sound perturbed by the label, or by its apparent accuracy. Charles and Raven had often chided him for being unable to cut loose, but if the requirement for a good time was playing embarrassing party games in his stocking feet, Erik was more than happy to be labeled a grouch.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only